“He was trying to play with the dogs, he hopped over the fence,” Scoppettuolo says of Marchetti, also from Revere. “He was petting one of the dogs, the other dog I guess was sleeping. Then someone called him, and after he got off the phone, he petted him and the dogs started biting him.”

The boys have been visiting and petting the dogs for more than a year, but always from the other side of the fence. The animals are guard dogs at a construction site behind the Northgate shopping center on Route 60.

Scoppettuolo says they know the dogs by name: “I think they’re both girls, one is Sunny and one is Bella.”

The kids sometimes even put their hands through the fence to pet the dogs, and Scoppettuolo says Marchetti would rub the dogs’ bellies. But late Thursday afternoon was the first time Marchetti went inside the yard.

Scoppettuolo says he didn’t go in as well because his father is always reminding him not to trespass and never to be a follower.

Scoppettuolo says it was easy to get over the fence; he and his friend just climbed onto some large containers.

“If you go in there, there’s kind of like stairs up you just walk up there and keep walking,” he explains, “and we just jumped down one, and you just hop the fence to get in.”

But he stayed on top while Marchetti went farther.

As the dogs began mauling Marchetti, Scoppettuolo stayed calm and used his cell phone to call 911. He even tried to shout information down to his friend on how to protect himself, based on what the 911 dispatcher was telling him.

Revere police say if he hadn’t made that call, they have almost no doubt the dogs would have killed the 14-year-old.

Scoppettuolo’s family is incredibly proud of him for calling 911.

“I was amazed what he did, I was really amazed,” his uncle Jerry Scoppettuolo told WBZ. “He saw his friend be attacked and then to just take out his phone — a 12 year old — take out a phone and call 911 for help. That’s just amazing.”